Predicament
by Sophia Bee
Summary: Dan POV, takes place after 4x19, refers to hallway scene of 1x04.  I'm an angst junky and Dan provides so much fodder.


Predicament

If he'd never seen her as human maybe he wouldn't be in this predicament.

_You really like her._

He'd tried to tell himself that they could just be friends, because there was something about here that was worth being friends with. He'd known that for a long time, that somewhere between the barbs and insults she flung at him was someone who was a real person with real hopes and dreams, not just Queen B.

He'd seen it in the hallway, and it was funny that the one thing that stood out was he how cold the wall had felt as he slid down it and stretched out on the floor. He could still picture her, sitting on the floor, undignified, her legs all askew, her eyes leaking tears from around the edges, vulnerable but still too proud to let anyone see her truly cry, her mascara slight smeared and her persona still intact enough for her to valiantly hurl an insult in a lame attempt to save what dignity she had left.

Dan had felt for her, and that was his weak moment, because from then on, no matter how dismissive Blair would be to him, Dan would always know there was someone underneath that veneer who was no different than him, who suffered at the hands of others, who struggled to feel worth something in this world. She had let him peer through the cracks that day and from that point on there was no turning back from the glaring fact that Blair Waldorf was a human being who really just wanted to be loved. By her mother who cared more about her career than her daughter. By Serena whose self-centered thoughtlessness destroyed everyone around her. By whatever handsome bland man came her way who looked like he might rescue her from herself. By Chuck, who was happy to let Blair's darkness envelope her completely.

Maybe that was why he had let her into his world, stepping out of the darkness of movie theaters and museums into the cold winter sunlight, discussing plot and character as they walked down the sidewalk gripping hot cups of coffee, their breath making clouds of moisture in the air, Dan tucking his chin into his scarf to warm his face a little, Blair digging her hands deeper into her pockets to fight the chill. Maybe that was why he had suggested lunch instead of uttering niceties and turning to walk the other way, him back to Brooklyn and her back to her world on the Upper East Side.

He had decided to ignore any significant analysis of what was going on. Ignorance seemed to be the closest he could come to bliss when it came to Blair Waldorf. He decided to ignore the fact that he liked the way her eyes crinkled a little when she smiled, that she had this kind of shockingly undignified habit of licking her fingers between bites of perogies, that she leaned forward and talked even faster when she felt she was right, that she was right most of the time. He ignored that when they parted ways he often found himself smiling without knowing it, replaying their conversations in his head over and over, wanting to call her to ask her some random question just to hear her voice. If he hadn't been so deep in denial, if he could have watched from the outside, taking in the way their heads bowed together, the way he occasionally bumped against her as they walked along the sidewalk, he might have decided that he was in the throughs of some schoolboy crush.

Charlie's words replayed in his head. He really liked her.

This wasn't like Serena, falling in loved over and over again, sometimes with him, sometimes not, somehow addicted to that first rush of a new relationship, and when she laid eyes on you in those moments, it was like heaven. Even back then, deep in the grips of his addiction to romance and all the bubbly goldenness of Serena Van Der Woodsen, he had felt bad for Blair as she rushed past him, throwing him a look of disgust mixed with annoyance, a look that said having someone like Dan Humphrey witness her weakness was adding insult to the injury that Serena thoughtlessly heaped onto her. Even then Dan had known that being in Serena's world was not easy, even for someone like Blair Waldorf who belonged there a million times more than he did. It was strange, all this time later, the more he'd gotten to know Serena, the further away from her felt. Even without her pedestal, without his wide-eyed, lovesick teenage version of reality clouding his view of her, there was so much about her that he found adjacent to intolerable. Yet Blair, part of that same world, seemed closer than ever, knit to him by intellect and something else, something deep and slow and present. He understood her in a way that he'd never understood Serena.

This thing, this friendship, it was against his best judgement.

If only he'd stayed in Brooklyn, drinking too much caffeine and writing bad poetry, and Blair had remained in her world of parties and socialites, and they had kept those boundaries firm, but he had walked toward her at a moment when her dejection was almost palpable, radiating outward, drawing him in. He had bothered to care. He had seen that they were not all that different.

Instead he'd become her co-conspirator, agreed to their off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush-lurking in doorways-plotting exit strategies friendship that had become something different than when they'd started, except she didn't seem to notice this. Dan knew it was something else. He could tell by the way that he wanted to kiss her just one more time. Just in case something was there, just to make sure they weren't lying to themselves. At least that's what he'd tell her. Then maybe one more time after that.

At some point something that seemed so simple, a straightforward friendship, a meeting of intellectual minds, had grown messy. At least for him. With their secret emotional affair was laid bare for the world to see and entirely dismissed by Queen B as being nothing more than a momentary thing, a weakness on her part, pitstop on the road to the realization that she wanted more of something else besides what Humphrey had to offer, Dan knew he wanted more as well. He couldn't deny that when she had leaned forward and kissed him something had shifted, an almost imperceptible change like that day in the hallway when they'd made that small step from being enemies to not being friends.

Blair had laid out her version of their revisionist history. Blair Waldorf would kiss princes and she might kiss toads in hopes of princes, but she would never kiss Hum Drum Humphrey and have it mean something. And he'd agreed to this twisted version of events. Mostly. Well, he'd nodded his head and said the right words, not willing to give up what he already had in order to get something more from someone who was clearly not willing to give it. Still, there was part of him that had felt a slight change in the universe, a moment of reorientation and he knew that it didn't matter how much Blair lied to herself or to him. Nothing could be what it had been.

If he thought about it, which he didn't, because why think about something that was impossible. But if he did, whether it was in the middle of the night or a sudden flash of clarity as he was staring at his computer screen. If he allowed her to again sneak into his head yet again, he knew he was in trouble. So instead he wrote, creating characters, weaving a version of reality that helped dull the ache in his chest that he'd decided to pretend didn't even exist.

If only he'd never seen her as human. Maybe then he wouldn't be in this predicament.

_You really like her. _


End file.
